Per the FAQ:
Q: do these Asylum City model communities of yours feature crypto in some way
… as if it might be up to me, which it is in my own science fiction. I have influence in that way.
And my answer is:
A: sure these “futurama vistas” will feature crypto, but necessarily all in the same way”.
That’s more a prediction than a prescription.
We all know about my fascination with food truck culture, Portland being dotted with such pods. I was at one yesterday, paying cash this time, for a chili relleno burrito, a good one, which I ate indoors in a large air conditioned space with a bar. The bartender (whom I know well, even from a previous incarnation) introduced me to non-alcoholic (meaning 0.5%) Guinness. Wow, it was tasty. I’ll be getting more of that.
But couldn’t I have paid for my burrito with crypto in a parallel universe?
The idea is simple, and already in use throughout the world: when you want to use goods and services that cost in currency (not all do), exchange currency you already have for the ones that matter in the city (village, food pod…) in question. You don’t exchange currency on the spot, as a part of the burrito transaction, but separately, such that your dollars or pesos go to some bank.
I know what you’re thinking: why can’t my credit card, linked to a dollar account, go through the conversion process at the point of transaction. From my point of view, I’m paying in dollars, but the burrito truck receives credits in whatever they’re using, and they’re happy with that, because their currency is far from valueless. I probably have a wallet with some of their currency too, but rather than use it, I buy the burrito with dollars and save the local credits for the sushi cart another time.
Glenn Stockton and I were once trying to interest a certain ghost church in lending upstairs rooms to a crypto lab installation, such that local geniuses, prodigies, interested parties, could come get trained in crypto and start simulating these various architectures. We’d have a beam antenna straight to OMSI, more of a headquarters. As expected the plan went no where on the ground, but at least I got the ideas on “paper” in case we wanted to try again sometime later, maybe in a different ghost church who knows.
I mention ghost churches because sometimes the most straightforward way to house an NGO is to let it piggyback on an existing charity.
We call it “incubation” and AFSC would practice this, letting a office space become a startup in public space, and working to make it self sufficient, in terms of funding and eventually in terms of office space and legal basis.
At which point AFSC would “spin it off” somewhat as a mother bird pushes a baby bird out of the nest, not to kill it but to give it a best chance of future survival, as a full member of the winged animal branch of the family.
The gamer community is antsy to make crypto more a reality, not just as an asset you hold or covet, but as a practical retail point of transaction thing, because the conventional powers are flexing their muscles regarding what they will and will not accept as payments.
People wanting to buy chocolate from nation X may find their orders blocks as X is on some list of nations not permitted to sell chocolate. You know how it goes. So X and its would be customers find a way to use crypto. Problem solved.
Now imagine something more like a hospital, and what you get to unlock and remove from the shelves requires authorization. You have to be on staff. We could call this an ID-pegged currency, in that you still have a budget, but you can’t just delegate the transaction to a patient.
By analogy, visitors or tourists in a carnival (I picture Oaks Park) might not have access to the currencies need to operate the carnival rides (I picture the Ferris wheel and rollercoaster etcetera). Only stuff can swipe a wallet card to move funds from a department budget to a ride’s on/off switch and power meter.
